


delude ourselves

by spookykingdomstarlight



Category: Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Bill Haydon Almost Does The Right Thing, First Kiss, M/M, Melancholy, Pre-Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, Snapshots, Yuletide Treat, only kiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 23:38:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13134585
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spookykingdomstarlight/pseuds/spookykingdomstarlight
Summary: Bill Haydon wouldn’t allow himself to have the one thing that truly mattered.





	delude ourselves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [th_esaurus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/th_esaurus/gifts).



They met on a rugby pitch on a lovely autumn morning, the air crisp with possibilities, the grass green in one last show of defiance against the threat of a wet, miserable winter. The sun shone, too far from the Earth to do much more than make promises for the coming spring. It was, in all, the perfect sort of day for Bill Haydon, who was neither dressed for rugby nor interested in playing at the moment. As he scuffed his shoes against the ground, toeing at the cold-hardened dirt, he wasn’t sure what he was about. It wasn’t his habit to roam and daydream, not this early in the term.

No, he saved that for exams. When everyone else scrambled, frazzled, about the courtyards and hallways trying to cram as much information into their brains as possible, that was when Bill developed a sickening, undeniable wanderlust, the need to move, to be anywhere but here. To be at school? Studying? When there was a whole world out there? No, beating one’s head against one’s dry, dusty books was not Bill’s idea of a good time.

The fact that he succeeded despite this, with hardly any effort at all, fueled his most annoying habits and kept him from having as many friends as a man with a smile like his should have attracted. Part of him wanted to care about that fact. What was the point of university if not to build lasting connections with your peers? The people who would haunt you throughout your life whether they found their way into government, business, or, God forbid, the arts, where you might be forced to watch them perform or write or paint the works that all good and civilized people found intriguing though they could never explain to anyone’s satisfaction why that might be.

Bill dabbled in the arts. He knew it for the lie it was.

But that was neither here nor there, because further down the pitch stood a slim, lost-looking young man, his hands jammed into a rather fetching leather jacket. Sometimes, Bill felt like he knew everyone here and disdained all of them, but he’d never seen this particular windswept head of dark hair before, nor the sharp, delineated lines of that profile, and Bill was attracted to nothing so much as novelty.

Grinning, he marched toward the newcomer, ready to welcome him to Oxford, stake his claim on this man before the mediocrity that festered about them could take everything Bill found interesting in him and swallow it whole.

If this were the pictures, it would be the start of a beautiful friendship.

But it was not.

Bill didn’t yet know enough to mourn that fact.

One day, though, he would. And on that day, he would mourn for England, too. What bits remained of it that were worthwhile anyway.

*

The Second World War was a cock-up from start to finish. Not because it wasn’t fun, no. Scurrying about Europe like a madman with free license to do as he pleased, earning the respect of one’s peers with daring acts of sabotage and stealth and intelligence gathering, it would have been the best time of Bill’s young life if not for one thing.

Jim Prideaux was not there to enjoy it with him. In fact, Jim had been sent off on his own missions to who knew where—Bill, of course, but he pretended he didn’t, a gentleman’s agreement, if only one he made with himself—doing the real abominable work of war so that others wouldn’t have to. He frowned, sometimes, thinking on it, the dangers Jim placed himself into because he loved England more than he loved himself or—and this was worse, in Bill’s estimation—Bill.

Nightmares never plagued Bill’s rest, but sometimes, he couldn’t sleep at night. The bed might have been pleasant and the company at least as enjoyable, but there were nights that wide chasms opened up in his chest, never to be assuaged until the end of the war. He papered over the holes with liquor, with men and women and both at once, with rampant gossip and the occasional slip of information to the right person to see an unseemly bit of dirty work done.

The kind of work Jim did in Turkey, in Hungary, in places more far-flung than that.

Occasionally, Bill threw out lures, hoping it would be Jim who was forced to pick them up. The right theater, the right intel, just on the scant hope that the stars would align just this once. It was the only form of luck Bill never experienced.

Bill wouldn’t have recommended that to anyone.

Sometimes, Bill believed, truly and deeply, that they could have ended the war between the two of them if only they could have been together to do so.

They were a team; if not for the war, they would have been inseparable, invulnerable, utterly indestructible.

*

In time, all things erode.

That was the lesson Bill learned. Not just from the war, not just from the Circus he found himself all caught up in, a lion tamer amongst clowns, dancers, fire breathers. An elephant or two. But from England, the concept of which was so blessed to Jim that Bill couldn’t help but pay attention despite himself, see the rot that Jim could not see, not so different from all the ways Jim couldn’t see the entirety of the truth that made up Bill Haydon.

That fact sat, lead heavy, in his gut for a long, long time.

What exactly did Jim see and what did he not? How much of it was self-deception and how much genuine blindness?

This haunted Bill, these questions, and he couldn’t begin to articulate why.

*

“How is it you love England so much?” Bill asked, hand wrapped around a mug of steaming coffee, one sugar too sweet—a luxury he should not have indulged with how little sugar there was to go around still—not enough milk. He should have made Jim make it for him; he always knew just what to do with Bill’s coffee. Jim, as usual, had chosen tea and was currently doctoring it with a heavy dose of whisky he found in one cabinet. After, he roamed Bill’s kitchen like it was his own, too, prying open cabinets as he took a sip in search of… “What are you looking for?”

A fleeting look of guilt crossed Jim’s features and he closed the door, his palm pressed flat against the wood. His eyes wouldn’t meet Bill’s gaze.

Bill pushed himself to his feet. That just wouldn’t do, would it? Jim never hid from Bill, not once. Not except when he was ordered to hide by London Station and even then it was nothing personal. This, everything here, was personal.

Bill’s hand was softer than Jim’s, but it settled gently over the outline of Jim’s knuckles. His fingers splayed between the spaces left behind by Jim’s. If he lifted his other hand, he could have bracketed Jim, held him in place, acted as a cage against which Jim could push. Bill would have liked that, he thought, having Jim push against him, make a demand. Maybe for freedom or maybe for something else. It hardly mattered which.

As long as Jim looked at him again, none of it mattered.

Jim cleared his throat. When he spoke, his voice was gruff with disuse and whisky-burned. His eyes were glued to their joined hands. Not quite what Bill wanted, but close enough that he would accept it. “You don’t normally invite me over after the Christmas party.”

“Hang the Christmas party,” Bill said, leaning further into Jim’s space, daring him to act. He’d seen Jim play sports, shoot weapons, take larger men down in fights. Jim was a man of action. Everything could provoke Jim and so everything did.

It was Bill who played games and words were his favorite toys, but not tonight. Tonight was a night for directness.

“What’s so special about England?” If there was a touch of the dramatic about the question, his voice clipped, the delivery severe, Jim didn’t seem to notice, biting at the inside of his mouth as he considered the question. His brows furrowed, lining his forehead with the physical manifestation of his contemplations. “Do you even know the answer?”

There was a part of him that he kept locked up so tight that even he could no longer find the key.

If he had to give it a name, he’d call it Doubt.

He preferred not to give it that much power.

Jim’s lips parted, perhaps to answer Bill’s prying question, but just as quickly as he’d forced it into the air between them, he suddenly found he didn’t want the answer. Whatever he could possibly say wouldn’t change the truth. It wouldn’t bring back better times. They would never get Oxford back and that, in Bill’s mind, made the whole venture pointless.

His mouth pressed a kiss against Jim’s almost of its own accord, almost before Bill had so much as noticed he’d even done it. And worse, like his brain was no longer in charge, he pressed Jim back against the counter and laced their fingers together. His nails dug into the meat of Jim’s palm and his bones ached from how hard they held onto one another. His free hand settled on the slim, muscled line of Jim’s waist. Jim’s lips parted beneath his and their teeth clicked together and it was as good as Bill had ever felt doing this. He’d sweet-talked more than a few people into his bed in his time and none of them even came close to the thrill that lanced through him at having Jim here, under his spell and responsive, so responsive that Bill could have done nothing but this for the rest of his life and still never fully learn all of Jim’s reactions.

He reared back as though burned, startling Jim enough that the back of his head collided with the cabinet. His eyes widened and his cheeks flushed a deep red and it was only now that they’d done this that Jim was willing to look him in the eye.

Bill dared not guess what Jim saw there, for he saw plenty in Jim’s: hope, wonder, concern, heat.

Love.

What Bill felt in return was both far more and far less complicated and none of it was anything Jim needed to know about.

Foolish to have exposed so much of himself regardless.

Weakness, he couldn’t abide it in others and especially not in himself. Not with the stakes as high as they were. Random individuals, people with names he barely remembered on nights he was happy to forget, that was one thing. That hurt nobody.

Jim, Jim was another thing entirely. If he let Jim in, Jim would figure it out, learn the truth that was at Bill’s very empty, very changeable core. Jim, too, was breakable in ways that only Bill could see. Bill was not a selfless man, but he could scrounge up a moment’s grace from somewhere. For Jim, he could do more than that.

Better, then, to break him in a small way than to shatter him into a thousand pieces later.

He knew now that that was exactly what was likely to happen anyway.

Bill just wasn’t a loyal man, not by any measure that Jim would demand of the concept.

“I think you should go,” he said, stiff, putting a degree of distance between them that was as much metaphorical as it was literal. It might only have felt like a few steps, but in truth, it was so much more than that. And the sudden confusion in Jim’s eyes told Bill that Jim didn’t even realize it, couldn’t imagine what had just been put into motion around him.

Poor Jim.

Always so trusting.

He’d let himself be snared by Bill of all people and Bill—ridiculous, really—had allowed the same to happen in return. They’d been this way so long, the severance should have been quick and painful and done with as quickly as possible. That would have been the fair thing to do, the kind thing.

But the tangled mess they’d made of themselves could just as easily go ignored if Bill willed it to be and Bill wasn’t always the most responsible of men. He could let Jim leave now and pretend nothing was the matter or any different come tomorrow. Jim would go along with anything Bill wanted; he’d eventually make himself believe that Bill was right, that they were not meant for this, even though it was, truth be told, the only thing either of them might have needed in this damned, corrupting life they led.

Bill was not loyal and he was weak.

He let this lie. Pretended it never happened.

Jim did the same.

They persisted, but they were not the inseparables any longer.

*

England was so very ugly.

Bill wanted nothing more than to see it the way Jim did.


End file.
